An Ashumi Story
by Inspector K
Summary: Two young children think their lives are perfect, even though they have no parents. Though when they are one day ambushed by strange creatures that neither of them has ever seen before, their world takes a drastic change.


**Prologue**

A roaring fire does nothing to sustain warmth, nor light, in the huge, stone room. A lone figure paces back and forth, his silver eyes shining with malice and hatred. An image is burned into his mind; a young child, half naked, crawling through the thick forest brush in the middle of the island, her small head covered in orange-red hair with little black tips, her small ears sprouting from the upper sides of her skull, merged and as free moving as a cat's. A drop of pure opal hangs about her neck.

The memory continues; he creating a fireball, preparing to hurl it at the child… A twig snaps, leaves break, and strange, yet familiar, voices ring out in the heavily humidified air, calling the name of the child. His white wolf ears perk to listen as his eyes scan the brush. One, no… two voices… A soft coo from the child snaps his attention back to her. His pupils widen as he sees her looking at him, right in the eyes. He sees her vivid orange eyes; rimmed with reds and yellows, dancing like a candle flame in the sunlight; locked with his cold, hard, mercury colored eyes. He sees her get up and start to crawl to him, her small tail wagging behind her; the same colors as the hair on her head… This was the prophecy child… he had to destroy her…

He brings his arm back, about to hurl the ball of flame at the child. A fierce cry escapes from his lips before he can stop it, and he hurls the fireball at the child. He hears a fierce rushing as the plants break and snap under two pairs of legs. He notices that he is completely in view. It doesn't matter, though… his job has been finished.

Or so he thought.

A second glance at the child sends a chill up his spine colder than the Antarctic air where he lives. The child is… _playing_… with the fire… rolling it around on the ground, as though it were a small rubber ball; the surrounding leaves steaming a little from the heat, but otherwise left untouched. He is surprised that she has mastered this skill so wonderfully… so early… But he cannot let it go on like this… He reaches for a syringe hidden deep in his heavy coat. As his claws wrap themselves around them, there is a crash of vegetation, and two women, one with black hair and poisonous green eyes, an athymest dangling from a chain around her neck, her black tail thrashing back and forth through the humid air. The other is in her vixen form, her sand-colored fur and large, attentive, sandy eyes, perked and alert. Her large, wide ears and black nose catches his scent. He is in full view of these two fox-women, and they see him.

All three of them glance quickly at the young little girl playing with the fireball. The black-haired woman lunges for her, desperate to save her…

But he is closer.

In a whirl of his long, white hair, he has the child in his hand, the syringe in the other hand, the silver mercury swishing silently in the tube, the needle centimeters away from her neck. The black-haired woman lets out a cry of frustration, and he grins, showing gleaming white fangs in a human set mouth. He knows her dark powers are useless in the day light. Where there was a desert fox stood another woman, her yellow diamond bouncing off her chest. Her muscular legs tense up under her khaki shorts in a vain attempt to find sand on this part of the island. However, he knows there's only moist underbrush and soil. Nothing in her power lies here. He starts to back toward the forest, the needle still not far away from the child's neck. He plans to teleport once he gets into the underbrush…

He hears a soft giggle from his arm.

He looks down and gets wide eyed as the young fox-child takes her opal and starts to finger it. He shivers and tries to move, but it's as if he is frozen with invisible, un-meltable ice… He forces fire to course through his veins, but it does nothing. She turns and looks up at him, avoiding the needle and looking into his eyes again. This time, they show a little glimmer. He sees it, and attempts to scream as the child turns back and drives the opal deep into his skin, an odd sharp point taking place of the smooth, rounded teardrop.

He throws the child down to the ground. The women watch in horror as she falls; the man screams in pain as the opal is yanked from its grip on his hand; the child giggles and coos with glee as she falls onto a mass of leaves as if it were a huge pile of pillows. He runs deep into the forest, hearing more footsteps run toward the scene. The last image that he has is the two women running to the child from across the clearing, six more pairs of eyes rushing to join them, and the burning glare of the child's flame-colored eyes, a smile dancing across her lips…

He is yanked back from the memory into the cold, dark room by a horrible feeling in his left hand. He yells out in pain; a horrible cry that carries out through the corridors of his castle, seemingly over the Antarctic wilderness. He hastily unwraps the bandages from his wrist and hand, showing a large gash that seems to visibly throb with pain, and clutches it with a vice-like grip as he runs to a bowl of mercury that he has sitting on a small pedestal. He thrusts it into the silver pool, almost sighing with relief at the instant cooling sensation on the wound, and a warm feeling everywhere else.

He hears a knock at the door. "Lord Sorlan…"

"Come in, Rano," He says.

A tall, muscular man with blue eyes and a brown mess of spiked hair comes in through the door, allowing light to pour into the room from the corridors outside. In his hands, he carries a silver colored potion. "I have your Auna, sir," he says with a sort of dignified courage.

Sorlan points to a goblet on a nightstand next to a still made bed. "In there, if you please… And bring it to me…"

Rano pours the fluid from its flask into the goblet, cooling the gold on impact. He brings it to Sorlan as he gingerly takes the hand and re-wraps the bandages over and around his Lord's hand. He has been doing this every night for the past two thousand years, ever since he came back from Ashumi Island on his first and only failed mission. Sorlan was weak, then… his hand in danger of needing to be cut off, silvery-crimson fluid flowing freely from the wound. Two thousand years, and it still had not healed.

But then, on Ashumu, opal wounds never heal.


End file.
